Overview

Class Central Tips

Advancing your career as a successful manager of technical and engineering teams means demonstrating effective leadership and possessing a range of real-world competencies. In this online graduate certificate program, you’ll master the key elements of engineering management and business-related functions, including finance, project management, and authentic leadership. Through this comprehensive approach to management, you’ll prepare to make an immediate impact at your organization.

The Engineering Management Graduate Certificate, consisting of 9 credit hours, is an affordable way for you to gain new skills, earn an industry-recognized credential, and prepare to advance your career. If you are interested in continuing your education, the certificate consists of the first three specializations in the full ME-EM on Coursera master’s degree and can be stacked toward the full degree.

Syllabus

Course 1: Finance for Technical Managers - Product Cost & Investment Cash Flow Analysis
- This first course in the finance sequence discusses costs and business practices to establish the cost of a product. The concept of the time value of money (TVM) is developed to determine the present and future values of a series of cash flows. TVM principles are then applied to personal finances and retirement planning. This is a practical, hands-on course that uses spreadsheets extensively.

Course 2: Finance for Technical Managers - Project Valuation and the Capital Budgeting Process
- This second course in the finance sequence describes the economic viability of an engineering project through application of net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period analysis. The impacts of depreciation, taxes, inflation and foreign exchange are then addressed. The capital budgeting process is discussed, showing how companies make decisions to optimize their investment portfolio. Risk is mitigated through application of quantitative techniques such as scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis and real options analysis.

Course 3: Finance for Technical Managers - Financial Forecasting and Reporting
- This third and final course in the finance sequence discusses how public projects are evaluated using cost-benefit analysis. You then learn how interest rates and prices for stocks and bonds are determined. Techniques are presented on how to create departmental budgets for engineering cost centers and pro forma statements for profit centers. You’ll then work with corporate financial statements to assess a company’s financial health, including recent measures of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG).

Course 4: Project Management - Foundations and Initiation
- The goal of this introductory course in a series of three is to provide you with the foundational knowledge of how engineering projects are managed and initiated. Engineering project managers are responsible for project scope, stakeholder management, effective communication, and team leadership. In this course, you will develop introductory skills needed to manage traditional engineering projects, along with tools needed to engage stakeholders and build diverse teams.

Course 5: Project Management - Project Planning and Execution
- The goal of this second course in a series of three is to provide you with skills necessary to plan and execute conventional engineering projects. Project managers must plan and manage complex projects constrained by time and budget. As part of this course, you will determine project schedules, budgets, and risk assessments. At the end of this course, you will be able to identify and explain various quality tools and methods used in project management.

Course 6: Project Management - Agile Project Management
- The goal of this third course in a series of three examines the philosophy and process of managing projects using Agile project management. You will learn the Agile philosophy and process, including the Scrum framework, sprints, and user stories. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to distinguish between traditional and Agile project management methodologies, and understand the benefits of delivering value early in an engineering project.

Course 7: Leading Oneself - Leading Oneself with Self-Knowledge
- Before we can lead others well, we must first learn to lead ourselves well. Knowing thyself is the starting point on this journey. In this course, you will come to understand the importance of three forms of awareness, craft a personal identity, gain understanding of how you work best, learn to be strategic with your time and energy, and manage cognitive biases and understand your worldview.

Course 8: Leading Oneself - Leading Oneself with Purpose and Meaning
- In this course, you will identify your core purpose and recognize meaning in your life, explore the power of spirituality and embracing our mortality, consider how to create a lasting impact by serving a greater good, describe your character, and learn how to practice personal excellence.

Course 9: Leading Oneself - Leading Oneself with Personal Excellence
- In this course, you will describe how and why to set goals and create action plans, increase your focus and reduce distraction, harness motivation and flow state for performance, build self-efficacy and agency, and redefine your relationship with stress, anxiety, fear, and adversity.